1. Technical Field
Several aspects of the present invention relate to an image recording device that takes an image and records the image obtained by the recording. Especially, the present invention relates to an image recording device and an image recording control program capable of photographing a desired area at a desired time and recording image data obtained by the photographing; and an image managing system provided with the image recording device.
2. Related Art
Crimes targeting children, elderly people, and women have often happened to be a social problem. Atrocious crimes such as arson, sneak thieves, and assailing thieves are also unending. Therefore, areas where surveillance cameras are installed have been increased so as to achieve a successful outcome such as rapid capture of a criminal and crime prevention.
However, the installing surveillance cameras disadvantageously needs a high cost due to installing power supply facilities, cameras, and a communication infrastructures. In addition, there is a problem to decide installation areas (only public areas) for cameras, and there is such problem that if a criminal notices a presence of cameras, the criminal may take measures so as to circumvent the cameras. Further, even a patrol by police, guards, and community residents has a limitation to man-hours and costs.
In the United States, surveillance cameras are installed on patrol cars (vehicle). Japan also has a plan to install surveillance cameras on all patrol cars. Vehicles (cars) have a power supply facility (battery), and a vehicle holder can decide whether a camera is installed or not. Further, cameras have been miniaturized so as not to interrupt a driver. The cameras installed in vehicles are cheaper than fixed cameras. Expanding this usage, the cameras may be installed in taxies, buses, vehicles for door-to-door delivery, vehicles for delivering mails and newspapers, office cars, company cars, and regular cars. Especially, taxies and vehicles for door-to-door delivery transfer various areas day and night. Since the socially vulnerable such as children, elementary school pupils, and elderly people uses buses and taxis, these vehicles may witness (record) a crime even when a driver of the vehicles does not notice it.
Due to the development of electronics, a drive recorder has started to be mounted on a vehicle. This apparatus records a state at the time that an accident happens. The apparatus records and stores image data for thirty seconds before and after the accident. Commonly, the apparatus starts taking an image of the circumference due to a rapid change, which is a trigger of taking an image, of a vehicle speed detected by an acceleration sensor and stores the image data.
There is a service using positioning information obtained by using radio waves from a global positioning system (GPS) satellite, as used in a car navigation system and a navigation system of a cellular phone. It is not an exaggeration to say that location measurement by using GPS is a usual practice. According to a camera system disclosed in JP-A-2001-257920, for example, a camera is controlled based on location information determined depending on a radio wave received from the GPS satellite, being able to take an image at a desired time interval at a position that is stored in advance.
Further, there is a concept of a probe car. According to the concept, information of various sensors mounted on the car is sent to a host system by using a network system and the data is re-used. For example, a jam-up state can be figured out.
However, in the above example, the photographing is automatically started when the camera reaches a photographing point that is set, so that the photographing is disadvantageously executed at a photographing point and the data is stored even in an undesired state such as the middle of the night. Consequently, unnecessary data may compress storage capacity of a recording medium or eliminating the unnecessary data may require extra effort.